Page 109 of All That We Are Together
I was breathless, and I had him there in front of me after so long…so perfect, his bronze skin seeming to scream at me to touch him. I pushed him back onto the bed and he fell, elbows propped up on the mattress, looking at me so lustfully that I trembled at his intensity as I climbed atop him and our lower bodies touched.
I closed my eyes. Pain and love mingled together. I needed to have him inside me so bad that the wait was killing me, and at the same time, I wanted to put it off as long as possible to feel it more and more and more. Axel seemed to have different plans, though.
He sat up, moved back in bed until his back was leaning against the wooden bedstead, and hugged me, grabbing me around the waist to pick me up so he could slide in between my legs. Iwrapped my hands arounds his neck while I felt him open me up inside. My eyes sank into his, his into mine, and our muscles tensed as his fingers gripped my thighs while mine caressed his hair. He grunted and rammed me and clenched his teeth.
“Jesus, babe, Jesus…”
“Let me,” I begged him. “Please.”
He heaved as I started moving on top of him, making love to him slowly, very slowly, because I didn’t want it ever to end, that instant was perfect and I wanted to savor it: the feeling of having him there, of possessing him, of looking at him and seeing love in his eyes the way I had looked at him all my life, his eyes telling me so many things without any need for words and giving me control without hesitating or trying to hide. Brave in his feelings, brave in letting me see every trace of pleasure on his face, his mouth searching for mine every time I rose up over his body and came down and our bodies joined again.
He shivered, and I responded by moving faster, pressing down harder. I wanted…I wanted to give him everything. I whispered into his ear that I wanted to feel him come, and his hands clutched my thighs and he pushed inside me faster. I sought his mouth amid that whirlwind of feelings: pleasure, sweat, skin rubbing together, and then he roared and finished and gripped me tight and the silence of the room seemed to embrace us.
____________
Axel had just soaped up my hair and turned on the faucet to wash off the foam. I felt his warm lips on my forehead while the hot water fell over us.
“I was serious about what I said, Leah. I want to kiss you good morning at the beginning of every day. I want to fuck you every single night. I want to come on you and in you. I want you to want me again. I want all that. For us to have it. To be a real couple.”
I smiled and said to him, “We all live in a yellow submarine.”
Axel cracked up laughing and whispered the same thing into my ear, sang it, sang me all theI love yous I needed to hear.
99
Axel
I was surprised when I reached over to the other side of the bed and found it empty. It wasn’t like me to sleep so late, until the rays of the sun were pouring into the room, but the night before, we hadn’t gone to bed until it was nearly dawn, we’d fucked and stared into each other’s eyes until everything finally came together and it was all exactly as it needed to be.
I got out of bed, went to the bathroom, and stopped at the kitchen to make myself a bowl of oatmeal with milk. I put a spoon in my mouth and looked at the stairway leading to the studio. I put my breakfast aside and walked up, opening the door and readying myself to grab her and convince her to come downstairs and spend some time with me before she started work, but when I got there, I found her sitting on the floor, knees pulled to her chest, eyes full of tears.
“What’s up?” I knelt down beside her.
“I wanted to look at the photos from the expo…” she responded, sobbing, before passing me her cell phone. “And I found this. I know my work isn’t perfect, but the way they’re saying this makes it seem even worse.”
I read the article she showed me, which talked about the exhibition from the night before. It was in a little-known English digital magazine. It mentioned several of the pieces, and was especially nasty about Leah’s: “Mediocre, lacking in creativity and coherence, almost boastful of its ignorance.”
I grabbed her cheeks and forced her to look at me. I tried to smile, to let her know it didn’t matter.
“Who cares, babe? It’s just an opinion.”
“But I think…I think they’re right.”
“I like your work. Doesn’t my opinion count?”
“You’re not objective,” she sobbed.
“I damn well am. When I saw the early paintings you did when you got to Paris, I told you I thought you could do much better. And I didn’t accept all your pieces for the exhibition in Brisbane, because some of them didn’t speak to me enough. So trust me. Why do you care so much about what that guy who wrote the article thinks?”
“It just hurts so much.”
“Don’t let him do that to you,” I said.
“You don’t understand. You don’t know what it’s like to strip yourself naked in front of the whole world, create something, and watch them stomp all over it. It’s personal. It’s still mine.”
“Exactly, it’s yours,” I reminded her.
I stood up, flipped through the Beatles records, and put on “Hey Jude” while I lay down beside her and pulled her into me. She hugged me there on the wood floor, calmer, and I kissed her on the head.